České překlady celebrating 20th anniversary
We are celebrating a small jubilee. Twenty years, that’s more than 7300 days in the history of our translation agency, which was founded on 4 February 2004 by Václav Baláček and Lukáš Utíkal. Today our company has over 20 employees and we actively cooperate with more than 400 translators.
To mark this special occasion, we gave Vašek ten questions, and his answers are summarised in this birthday interview.
Vašek, when and where was the idea of establishing České překlady s.r.o. born? What inspired you to start a translation business?
I got into translating while studying at Palacký University. In 1994 I got my first PC, the legendary 386, by the way, and I thought that one way of using it would be for translating. At that time I became interested in Irish literature, so I translated Brian Friel’s play “Translations”. And that’s where it really started for me. I then translated a few more things “for the drawer”, attended translation seminars and dreaded the strict evaluation from our well-respected teacher Ms Knittlová.
In 1997 I started with “commercial” translations. At the same time, I worked as a project coordinator in a local translation agency, and in 2001 I decided to go freelance. Lukáš and I already knew each other a little bit, and in 2003 we agreed to work together. At first, the idea was to help each other and fill in for each other in terms of our capacities. Soon there was so much work that we needed additional help for office tasks and we needed to hire more translators – and so our company was born.
Let’s go back to the beginning. What challenges did you have to deal with?
If I remember correctly, in the beginning the main problem was to handle the large volume of work, especially jobs with short delivery times. It meant translating overnight and at weekends very often. We were 100% dedicated to the customers’ needs and it was far from easy to manage everything.
How do your role in the team and that of Lukáš, the co-owner of the company, complement each other ?
Since the beginning, I think I have been the bigger shooter, if I may say so. I am not afraid of new challenges, but on the other hand I lack a sense of detail, while Lukáš is a hard worker, and he knows how to get to the bottom of things. He has that sense of detail that I lack. In that I think we’ve always complemented each other well.
Later on, I focused more on the technological side of the business, including the use of CAT tools (Wordfast, a lot of MemoQ and especially Memsource – Phrase). Lukáš is definitely a better proofreader when it comes to translations, and I think he is better at building relationships with people than I am when it comes to managing the company.
Twenty years is a long time. Would you be able to say what your biggest success so far has been, or how you achieved it?
The good thing is that we were able to win some really big customers during the crucial phases of our development. In the beginning, I think we were a bit lucky to start working for Eastern Sugar; they were a stable and very strong customer for several years, just like SZÚ, Citibank, Havel and Holásek… these are just a few examples; I don’t want to forget anyone important. In recent years, it is obviously Notino. Otherwise, I consider our greatest success to be that we have been operating as a strong and reliable translation service provider for 20 years, a solid partner for our translators and, I sincerely hope, a good employer. Many of our team members have been with us for over a decade.
Was there anything that you would describe as a failure in these two decades? And what did you learn from it?
It didn’t hurt us that much, but I would definitely mention two things – running a language school and running a translation division for larger international translation agencies. We did both for several years; both generated a very low profit and were very labour-intensive and difficult, and in both cases we knew there was no point in doing what we did long before we eventually decided to quit. I don’t know if we have learned our lesson, but it’s clear to us that there is no point in doing something that we know with a high degree of certainty is not beneficial for us. On the other hand, we met interesting people thanks to it – including lecturers, language school managers and the project managers we hired to work for foreign agencies.
If you could go back in time, what would you have done differently?
I don’t want to sound too silly, but I really can’t think of anything. I wouldn’t change anything about this story. This is how it was supposed to happen and it happened for the best.
Now a question that you probably get asked quite often. Still… what makes the services of your agency, České překlady, different from the competition? What are your trumps?
I believe that our advantage lies mainly in the fact that we work with a very stable team. We train our vendors, we take care of them, we provide feedback, we help them develop, and I think I can say that we pay them well and always on time. Then I would definitely mention the experienced team of project managers who have expertise, have a perfect sense of detail and make us a reliable partner to our clients. And of course, we have a great sales team that focuses on customer care. The fact that we are not doing it completely wrong is visible from the results of regular satisfaction surveys among customers and vendors.
Can you say what the trends in translation today are and how you are responding to them?
In short, definitely machine translation and AI. The situation is unclear and unpredictable, and for now we are trying to understand and monitor what is happening. We are monitoring the extent to which translators are using machine translation and thinking about how to use the data we collect in production.
What advice would you give to young aspiring translators?
To be honest, I don’t really feel like someone who should advise translators. Maybe I’d rather talk about budding entrepreneurs in general. I would advise them to think carefully about the product they are offering, work honestly, believe in themselves, and think first and foremost about the customer and their benefit.
Finally, I cannot help asking, where do you see České překlady in another 20 years?
I believe that České překlady will still exist in 20 years, doing good work and making ourselves and others happy. The translation industry will certainly not die out with the development of MT (machine translation) and AI.
Thanks a lot for the interview!
Next time we will invite Lukáš Utíkal, the other co-owner, to have a word with us.
